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Citibank Lets Loyalty Members Pool Points on Facebook

Citibank has offered a new Facebook app that lets members of its ThankYou rewards program pool points with friends and family.

The ThankYou loyalty program lets holders of Citi credit cards and checking accounts accumulate points and redeem them for travel rewards or merchandise (there also are options to earn bonus points, say for shopping at certain retailers). Credit card holders typically earn one point for each dollar spent; checking account customers earn points depending on the type of account they have and the number of other Citi products they use.

With the new app, ThankYou members can establish a goal using Facebook and encourage their online “friends” to contribute their points. For instance, according to Citi, a family could pool points to help a relative travel home for the holidays. Or a group of friends could combine points to purchase a rewards item for charity, say, a television to be donated to a homeless shelter.

Last year, Citi began allowing ThankYou members to transfer points to friends and family members via the program’s Web site. Ralph Andretta, head of co-brands and loyalty for Citi’s card unit, said customers liked the transfer option, so Citi decided to expand it to Facebook, where many people are in contact with their friends. He said Citi was the first bank to offer such an option via Facebook. “We thought, why not bring it to where customers spend time socially, on Facebook?” he said. “This is a sense of multiple people pooling points for a unified cause or reward.”

Citi does not disclose the number of participants in its ThankYou program, but the Facebook app clearly has the potential to bolster membership.

To participate, users must have a Citi credit card or checking account, and be registered for the ThankYou rewards program. Then, users can to go Citi’s Facebook page and link the sharing app to their ThankYou account. (As an incentive, Citi is offering 2,500 ThankYou points to the first 4,000 people who link to the Facebook app). Users can then establish a pool with a point goal, and invite their Facebook friends to contribute. (Participants must be “friends” and be ThankYou members who have linked their ThankYou account to the rewards app.)

There’s no fee to transfer points, and no limit on the number of points that can be transferred.

There are a few caveats. Pooled points are given to a single individual, so it seems prudent to know that person fairly well. The recipient can’t transfer the pooled points to anyone else, but there’s no requirement, for instance, that the recipient actually use the points for the intended goal. (Or, in the words of the program’s terms and conditions, “ThankYou Rewards and Citi have no responsibility and no obligation to any Pool Contributor for how the Pool Owner uses the Points received from a Point Pool.”)

Point donors can withdraw or change the number of points contributed until the pool is “closed” by the organizer; after that, the points are actually transferred out of the donor’s account, and they cannot be returned.

Transferred points must be redeemed within 90 days, or they expire.

A Citi spokeswoman, Emily Collins, said the bank did not share participants’ ThankYou account information with Facebook and had built other privacy protection steps into the app.

There are limits, for instance, to what participants in the point pool can see. Donors can see the number of points they contributed, as well as the total points accumulated toward the goal — but they can’t see the number of points contributed by others. The pool’s organizer can see the amounts contributed by each donor, but cannot see any other data from their ThankYou accounts, like the total number of points held in the account.

Do you think social media sites like Facebook are a good outlet for pooling rewards points? And would go to the trouble of setting up something like what Citi has organized?

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